The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is offering Whanganui Mayor Hamish McDouall free financial literacy training after his extraordinary comment which demonstrated complete disregard for ratepayers and the sacrifices they make to fund councils.

Union spokesperson Louis Houlbrooke said: “We pride ourselves on being an educating union and Mayor McDouall definitely needs some tutoring about rates. Speaking on behalf of Local Government New Zealand about the costs of climate change, he said: ‘My theory generally is that it's better to spend money now.’

”“That is just a terrible approach to spending public money. Each and every dollar should be robustly justified and spent only when necessary. The Mayor’s ‘general theory’ is fiscally destructive, wasteful, and disrespectful to ratepayers who actually earn the money he just wants to spend ‘now’.”

“Like ratepayers have to, Councils should live within their means. This means low-quality spending needs to be dropped, not spent ‘now’ to fit a misguided ‘theory,’“ said Mr Houlbrooke.

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